No. 1 question for Bible teacher:

R. Dawson Barlow, China missionary and beloved long-time teacher of the Bible who “graduated to glory” this past week, said the question asked most commonly by his students studying the Old Testament was, “What happened to Israel? Why did the people of God go astray, repeatedly retreating into a state of rebellion and anarchy? Why did they so utterly and dismally fail?”

The singular biblical answer, as he wrote in his 2005 must-read book The Apostasy of the Christian Church, is usually rejected because it’s too simplistic: “Israel’s failure was—and is—(just like the Body of Christ in this dispensation) based on her defective, debonair attitude toward the Holy Scriptures which had been entrusted to her.”

Barlow assesses, “In my own generation I already anticipate those who will choke on this diagnosis. Those are the same people who now exhibit the same attitude toward the Holy Scriptures as did ancient Israel.

“Throughout the generations of man’s history, philosophers and humanists have balked at the mere suggestion that failing to adhere to the divine authority of God’s Word has anything to do with Israel’s failure and the seemingly endless trail of tears she has shed throughout history.

“. . . The sin nature, which all the posterity of Adam and Eve possess, most generally manifests itself as follows: ‘I need no outside authority. Whatever I believe in my heart is right for me. Thus, anything that opposes my thinking and the way I feel about things in my heart, (conscience, etc.) I reject!’ That was Israel’s fatal mistake!”

*****

Just before his death, Moses—who consistently delivered the Bible’s most explicit statements regarding Israel’s apostasy—assured the Hebrew nation its rebellion against God would only deepen and widen following his passing.

He writes in Deuteronomy 31, “For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you.”

Barlow reasons, “This information was not uttered as a mere opinion of Moses. It was not a matter of speculation! . . . He knew it not only because the murmuring nation had expressed the tendency all through their wanderings in the wilderness but because God had revealed it to him.”

Specifically, in Deuteronomy 31:16, God forewarns Moses, “Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them.”

*****

In a Bible study on this same subject of Israel’s apostasy, Jordan says, “Why weren’t they well-pleasing to God? Because they ‘lusted after evil things.’ They were ignorant of who they really were in God’s plan and purpose, and as a result of that lack of appreciation of their identity they became ungrateful and began to attach themselves to other things, and were literally seduced to go back into the idolatry God had literally rescued them out of when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.

“When Paul reminds the Corinthians in I Corinthians 10, ‘You know what happened to Israel . . .’ there’s an implicit parallel to what’s going on with Christians today.

“The special issue Paul’s pointing to about the nation Israel is this issue of making shipwreck of the faith and being a castaway (I Timothy 1:19). We can become castaways, set on the shelf, not utilized by God to accomplish His plan. Israel is an example because these issues that seduced Israel were seducing the Corinthians.

Specifically, Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
[2] And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
[3] And did all eat the same spiritual meat;
[4] And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
[5] But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
[6] Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. 

Jordan says, “This issue in I Corinthians 10:6 of not lusting ‘after evil things, as they also lusted,’ that’s Numbers 11! And there’s a fascinating thing back there about how it is that they would up lusting after evil things.

“Numbers 11:4-8 says, “And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?
[5] We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick:
[6] But our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.

“You see how it’s a heart problem? They complained, ‘We remember . . .’ They’re thinking about Egypt. Now, they didn’t have any reality in their experience yet about the Promised Land; they only had the Word of God that it was a land flowing with milk and honey.

“They got their minds off of God’s Word about where they were going, and who they were, and what He was going to do with them. Instead, they began to put their minds back on the old life and were enslaved to the memories of what God had redeemed them from.

“Their whole thought life was dominated by the defeated enemies God had buried back in the Red Sea. You see, sin is conceived in your thought life. You have a thought; you have an imagination. A suggestion comes along. Then when you’ve got the suggestion going, the desire is created. And then the desire becomes intent—you decide to do it.

“What Israel did is they got their mind off of who God had created them to be as a nation. They were ignorant; they didn’t appreciate God’s purpose in forming that nation and so it didn’t fill their mind. They went by their experiences instead; what they could feel and remember rather than God’s Word.

“You remember what Paul said: ‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.’ He said, ‘Set your affection on things above, not on things of the earth.’

“Don’t let reality be for you what you can see. Let reality be who God says He’s made you in Christ. Paul says, ‘And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ ”

*****

Here’s a great passage from Barlow’s book:

“. . . Modern-day humanists are sharp in their vituperation against the New Testament and criticize it because it promotes ‘racism’ and ‘anti-Semitism’. . . These Scriptures, we are told, illustrate the bias of the New Testament writers against the Jewish people.

“However, such a charge is totally without merit. The New Testament Scriptures, in relating the unbelief and rebellion of Israel, do not exhibit a bias. It is nothing more than a restatement of and a continued reference to Israel’s rebellion and apostasy as it is continuously reported throughout the Old Testament!

“If, therefore, anyone wants to maintain that the New Testament has an anti-Semitic (anit-Jewish) bias, then we would just as dogmatically and logically contend that the Old Testament has an even stronger anti-Jewish bias!

“. . . We would challenge anyone, Jew or Gentile, to read the Jewish Scriptures, especially Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Book of Judges in its entirety, just for starters. And then patiently read all the prophets.

“How those prophets were treated by the apostate chosen nation is a shameful, deplorable, record of a militant, defiant rebellion against the God of their fathers. It is a lamentable, tragic account of a people who would not revere the message of their God.”